Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing O-A Retirement Visas. I thought of making this video actually after reading a recent email from a viewer, quoting directly: "Hi Ben, On an O-A Retirement Visa since 2019, have you put out any videos about Immigration raising health insurance coverage from basically 1.5 million Baht to 3 million Baht. My immigration, Samut Prakarn, insists no grandfathering in place. The Immigration increase sets my annual health insurance cost at 97,000 Thai Baht which is a double increase for health coverage." 

Now let me be clear. I need to sort of address a possible conflation that could be drawn from that and that is the issue of grandfathering. What I have talked about when I have talked about the issue of grandfathering with respect to Thai Retirement Visas, specifically pertains to what I think would likely happen in the future if they substantially change the standard O Retirement Visa Extension. I'm not saying that necessarily about the O-A; there is a difference between the two subcategories. 

I've done the videos over the years. There is a substantial difference, one of them being insurance coverage. So that's what this video pertains to. And no, I had not heard this and apparently Samut Prakarn is saying this. So I'm he putting this down here more as a data point not as an alert or anything. I don't want people to freak out. 

I did another video recently or actually contemporaneously with this one where I'm discussing the financial balance required at Cha-am Immigration, that somebody saw that there were new guidelines with respect to that. Again as I said in that video, different Provincial Offices have different ways of doing things so don't presume something is necessarily a nationwide phenomenon. With regard to this though, this insurance coverage, if that is what's being said at Samut Prakarn, we will go ahead and delve into it a little bit further and try to figure out what this is all about. Help in the comments would be appreciated; trolls if you could keep it to a dull roar that would be appreciated as well.

But again these are interesting data points with regard to Retirement Visas and as I have discussed it many times in other videos, New Year's tends to be when we see policy shift, so while I am not putting this out here as a dispositive sort of primer on all things Retirement Visa in 2026, this looks to me to be, the fact that they are even talking about an increase in insurance requirement at an immigration office leads me to believe that maybe that could be a thing. Again all the more reason in my opinion, get into an O Retirement Visa while you can because again as I have discussed in other videos, I think even if they up-end the Retirement Visa system, they will grandfather in those that they put in the system if it's anything to go by what went on in the '90s. I'm not saying that is necessarily a foregone conclusion. That is at the end of the day in a sense very much my best guess. But that being said, that's the way it looks to me at this time here in the Kingdom of Thailand.